2 years ago I turned in a paper to Turnitin. Can I use the same paper now?

If I turned in a paper to Turnitin two years ago and I turn in almost the exact same paper now, will it detect it as plagiarism even if I use the same account?

I've been looking everywhere and I can't find an answer.

Technically, "self-plagiarism" is still plagiarism by academic standards. If your professor tests it, it will show up as having been scanned previously because it stays in the system. You may have more of an excuse of innocent ignorance as far as your school is concerned plagiarizing yourself because you were the original author, at least. By contrast, there's no excuse when your paper shows up as having come from another source altogether.

TurnItIn has a policy to keep the paper in its archives. So, your paper is most likely to be still available in their archives. However, there is one option that can be used. If you want TII not to keep your paper, you need to request your prof./tutor to notify TII in this regard. They will remove the paper after 2 weeks. I am sure you didn't do that.

And, rewriting your own paper is unethical.

I didn't know you could remove your paper from the archive.


It is, but sometimes people find nice excuses and think they do nothing wrong...

Easy plagiarizer, would be a better username, wouldn't it?

I don't think a paper can be rewritten because the same topic (inasmuch as research is concerned) is less likely to be given to the same student. However, yes others can do so - which is cheating.

I don't see how.

If you read up on plagiarism, that's called "self-plagiarism" and most school honor codes and course rules that go into detail about plagiarism do specifically include submitting work for credit that the student as already written previously for credit in any other course.

Last year, one of my clients at solve my assignment was repeating a semester at a prestigious UK university because he had failed to clear the last hurdle. He was expelled from the University on grounds of plagiarism because he turned around exactly the same paper in which he had scored very high during the first submission.Thus you CANNOT re-submit even your own papers. It would be a case of 100% plagiarism. Hence at solve my assignment, we make it a point to re-write the entire essay word by word

So, you offer a pay service that changes one form of plagiarism into a different form of plagiarism. (Restating all the same ideas even in completely new words is still plagiarism.)

Perhaps, they don't know that it is another form of plagiarism.

Let's be realistic. Everyone uses the same ideas over and over and I don't agree that using the same ideas and expressing them in different words is self-plagiarism. After all, we all have some fundamental beliefs that we express in our writings time and again (i.e., women should have equal rights, America is the world's Salvation Army, increased commerce will improve everyone's standard of living, etc. etc.). These are shallow examples, but you see what I mean. Like good lawyers, though, we are always prepared to take a different perspective on things according to our clients' needs, but by and large, our opinions come through loud and clear -- at least mine do -- and I don't regard this as self-plagiarism. Maybe I'm missing the point.

@ ProfessorVerb : couldn't agree more :) Thanks for appreciating the position taken by SPAM .

We're not really talking about good-faith presentation of the author's beliefs or analysis on a very similar topic that just happens to be assigned in different classes. That hardly ever happens. The vast majority of instances of self-plagiarism involve the student's very deliberate choice to select an essay topic for a current course that he's already written for a previous class with minor changes to match the course, such as in a paper about the Cuban Missile Crisis submitted for credit as a research paper in a History class one year and then resubmitted a year later in a Political Science or International Relations class. What do you suppose a professor would say if you asked for permission to write a paper on the exact same topic you wrote for a different class? I don't make the rules about what constitutes plagiarism, but I've written enough papers on the topic to have looked it up and I know that submitting the same paper twice in different classes is considered self-plagiarism even though you wrote it. Rewriting all the same ideas and points in different words so that it can pass an online plagiarism scanner is also plagiarism. So, rewriting your own old paper for that purpose is very obviously plagiarism, at least according to what I've read and also according to common sense.

You have to take academy rules into consideration

Many experts in a field will write about the same topics over and over as additional research is conducted and most will cite their previously published work as part of their literature review. I'm not talking about a student taking an old paper and "doctoring it up" and turning it in as a new paper. I'm talking about writing about the same ideas using new sources and fresh critical analysis (e.g., "completely new words"). This is not self-plagiarism in my view.

As to rarely receiving assignments for a number of similar themes, I once wrote 32 different papers for the same class on group interactions in "The Flight of the Phoenix" (word got around) -- I still can't watch that movie today.

We're not discussing professional writers here. Obviously, I've also written about the same topics many times and I've written the same assignment for multiple customers in the same class many times. STUDENTS rarely get a writing assignment that's identical to a previous writing assignment. That almost never happens. Students frequently choose to write about the same topic they wrote about previously precisely so they don't actually have to write a new paper for the second class. That's the topic of discussion: Students, not professional writers or "experts" in any field.

The question was posed by a student about whether or not rewriting his previous paper in different words is plagiarism.

Submitting your own previous written work for a current class is the definition of self-plagiarism.

Changing all the words to say the exact same thing as a previous piece of writing is also plagiarism.

None of that has anything to do with actually writing the same assignment from scratch twice, even if you end up making many of the same points in both papers. That's not what students do when they purposely choose the same topic for papers in different classes.

Understand the difference?

If this is the case, we are all criminals.


Students have the same tendencies as all "experts" to prefer one topic area over another, especially if they have personal experience with it through their work or through previous research. This makes them experts, at least in the strict legal sense: "One who is knowledgeable in specialized field that knowledge being obtained from either education or personal experience" (Black's Law Dictionary, 1991, St. Paul, MN: West Pub. Co., p. 572). This is what makes people "expert" in something, after all, so it is logical that many students would focus on one area of specialized interest, especially one that is relevant to their career field (i.e., smartphone apps and marketing). Anyway, you're right, I should have been clearer, but I think you're creating a double standard for us (professional writers) and them (students and clients) that is, in my view, at least, sanctimonious.

When you said this: "If this is the case, we are all criminals."
I was going to respond "Speak for yourself because I've never written anything by just changing the words of something I wrote previously" but I wasn't looking to prolong the discussion. And self-plagiarism isn't a criminal matter in the first place.

You're the one who apparently admits to writing by changing words for the same ideas (as implied in the first quote above). I'm not creating any "double standard"; I've explained several times that you can't compare students and hired writers in this respect, simply because when students self-plagiarize, it's almost always a deliberate choice to select an essay topic they already wrote for another class. That has nothing to do with the issue of having to write the same assignment multiple times as a writer, because you suggested that professional writers and subject matter experts often write about the same topics multiple times. Self-plagiarizing students choose topics for that purpose; professional writers don't get to choose their topics like that.

You don't need dictionary definitions of "expert" here, just a better conceptual understanding of what's an apple and what's an orange, Professor. If you write about the same exact topic multiple times, as all of us do, it's not self-plagiarism if it happens to come out very similar to the prior paper because your analysis or opinion on the topic hasn't changed. If you handle consecutive identical assignments by opening up the last paper you did on the same topic and just change the words, that's self-plagiarism. You apparently admit to that process. I write every paper from scratch, including topics that I've handled numerous times. If my analyses and opinions are similar, that's not self-plagiarism.

If you still don't understand why one's an apple and one's an orange, you're not going to, but others reading this conversation might.

I understood everything completely. I just wanted to see how many words you would write in response. Wow!

I'm late to the discussion, but I think the discussion more or less shows why the university concept of plagiarism is a load of crap. Plagiarism is a big and scary word and in my mind, it best suits the world of professional writing where one writer has taken another's words and is profiting from them (financially or in career standing). University papers involve taking lots and lots of ideas from other people, citing them, putting in a bit of shallow commentary, and calling it a day. What's plagiarism? I don't know. Just don't copy and paste, and you're usually fine. Learn to paraphrase and your uni or college life will be much easier too :)

I am even later in terms of participating in this discussion but I would still like to add my thoughts on the matter. Yes, Turnitin keeps a permanent file with regards to the essay you previously submitted. So it will still show up in the system even decades after you have submitted it. Turnitin doesn't purge its system for a reason. I don't see anything wrong with you using the same paper now with some updates and changes to references because it has been long enough for new information regarding your research to have new and more updated data that can be included in your paper. So it will not turn out to be self plagiarism in as much as it would be an updated research paper.

Personally, I don't believe in self-plagiarism because plagiarism means you are citing the work of someone else as your own. You can't do that if you are the original content creator. Even if Turnitin says parts of your paper are plagiarized from your old work, that would not stand up in any court. All that means is that you wrote such a good paper in the past that it still has academic merit years after you wrote it. Don't worry about Turnitin, it can't prove plagiarism if it returns bits and pieces of your original paper in its scan. You can easily prove that you were the original author of the work. As long as you use updated references, since only the citations might come back as plagiarized, you will be well protected against such accusations.

I am not sure why the OP would be discussing turning in an almost exact replica of a paper he previously wrote. I believe that he was, at the time, looking into selling his paper on one of those pre-written essay sites. Those websites have been known to do plagiarism checks and in the process, refuse to accept papers that appear in databases. The problem, this student was faced with is that Turnitin does not delete any essays from its database, regardless of the length of time between the year of submission and the actual graduation of the student. When a student turns in his paper to this site, he turns over all rights to the essay so he basically doesn't own it anymore. Hence the paper could, even decades later, turn up in a highly similar paper is scanned through the system. Therefore, the student can never reuse a term paper for any reason. There is always a higher probability that it will come back as plagiarized, even if he is the original writer. No student should ever turn in the same paper twice, even if it is for use in different, but related subjects.

Either the student was looking to sell the paper 2 years later or, he had previously failed the prerequisite class and is now faced with the need to finally retake the class. If that is the case, the reason why he would want to reuse the same paper, with some alterations becomes evident. Personally, I would not advice any student to reuse an old paper. It is always best to use a fresh paper in any given scenario. Most specially when the possibility of plagiarism, self-inflicted or otherwise, exists. Besides, in the scenario of having to repeat the class, why would a student want to use the same paper that did not help him pass the class previously? That doesn't make any sense.

I'm super late to this discussion, but I just turned an assignment to turnitin which I had turned in before with the same account, and I got 0 % plagiarism, so I think it's fine.

That wouldn't a very reliable test, for a reason that should be fairly obvious if you just think about it for a minute.

I do not believe that a paper would magically disappear from the turnitin server after a number of years. The student truns over the rights to the paper once it is scanned. They are not going to delete any papers because that is how the company makes its money. The person making the O% plagiarism claim is outright lying. The database for comparison purposes continues to grow on an international scale. Plagiarism comparisons are no longer limited to the U.S. alone. Besides, students are in school to learn. Therefore, fresh and data updated papers make for the best paper submissions. An old paper, revised, will not recieve a good grade based on old source material.

Attn. Noted-- your grammar and usage of the English language are being tested to measure your competency in this industry. 6/9 of the above sentences were acceptable. That's a 67%-- Fail

Well, I recommend that you should avoid using that paper AGAIN.